


Human

by everlarklane



Category: Original Work
Genre: Autism, Disabled Character, Dysphoria, Gen, Implied Past Abuse, Implied abuse, Mental Illness, Trans Character, internalized ableism, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-03
Updated: 2017-01-03
Packaged: 2018-09-14 13:07:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9183064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/everlarklane/pseuds/everlarklane
Summary: I am hurricane and fire, blood and wildflowers. I'm human. I'm human. I'm human. Why's that so hard to believe?





	

I am tired. Cold. Chest tight, hands trembling, I sit and try to ignore the aching of my head and pounding of the snare drum deep in my chest.

It seems like so long ago that things were simple. When all I had to do was copy paste and pretend like I understood what it meant to be human.

There’s a hurricane inside me and I am there, in the eye with winds ripping at my shoulders and blood boiling in my veins. I am wildfire contained in fragile human skin and sometimes I wonder if others can see the inhumanity in me.

Perhaps. 

But I don’t think they quite understand. It’s a glimpse, a gossamer robe hiding the itching beneath my skin of a monster. 

I’ve done things, had things done to me that would change how people view me and I wouldn’t blame them. The memories haunt me, appear at every corner and I want to scrub my skin clean because it’s both my fault and not, I am enemy and victim all rolled in one. Locked away, key thrown but now found and Pandora’s box has been opened. 

I’ve grown familiar with villains in my head and yet I still find myself bowed to them. I am sitting here, cold and trembling and yet the aching in my head beats and the demons scream. 

I feed them.

* * *

 

Seventeen minutes pass. I breathe, steady. I sip water, pretending not to notice the shaking of my hands and instability of my temporary calm. I smile, look into dead, alien eyes and wonder wonder wonder.

My skin is tight as I rise, pulling at sharp cheekbones, sharp enough to cut, hard enough to bruise. I pass a vase of wilting lilies, petals bruised and pale.

I find a mirror. 

I do not recognize myself.

One hand rises to trace cheekbones, feels around the red bump and yet knowing it will not bruise. I am grateful. I am bitter and angry. I won’t need concealer and won’t have to face awkward questions but there’s no proof. No certainty that I am not faking, that this isn’t alright but that’s okay. I’ve survived. I will survive.

Seventeen minutes of panic. A minute of calm. An hour of screaming and fighting and scratches and strikes and yet…

I see strong jaw and adam’s apple and I want to throw something. There is heaviness and emptiness, all at once and a ghost of who I could be stands there, so close I can almost touch them but then they fade.

And I am left.

There is a note left in the upper right hand corner of the mirror. It has one word in my best friend’s looping handwriting and the wildfire in my heart banks as my eyes trace each letter. 

Human.

I am human. 

The human in the mirror raises their hand and so do I and maybe I’m strange and confused and odd, all sharp edges and shadow puppets and struggling to understand how people live without crushing pain and confusion, with an image in a reflection that matches and an innate understand of social cues and body language that matches what is supposed to be normal, but I am human.

I am wildfire, hurricane wrapped up in human skin. But I am human.

I don’t believe that.

I know it’s true.

I don’t believe it.

And I’m cold, my hands ache, and perhaps it’s a little too difficult to breathe, but I am human, human, human, human and I repeat it over and over and over in my mind in hopes that one day, it will engrave itself there and become true. 

I am human. 

I am tired. 

(perhaps that’s what makes me human most of all- the ability to become weary to the scraping bottom of my soul).


End file.
